


a night spent wishing

by elliestars



Category: The Owl House (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mental Breakdown, Self-Harm, Strong Language Usage, ah yes. cant you tell i have an affinity for alternative music, i sorta have a love/hate relationship w this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:14:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27481033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elliestars/pseuds/elliestars
Summary: There’s this song Luz can’t get out if her head, and it’s like the lyrics are burned into her brain.It’s a pain worse than you can imagine.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29





	a night spent wishing

**Author's Note:**

> uhh, yeah, it’s basically what it says on the title, yeah beware of some language in this fic, and also mental breakdown time :)

It’s been a rough day. A really, really rough day.

It’s not so much different from the usual day Luz would have at school. The blur of classrooms, tests, homework, papers, people passing through the halls, faulty air-conditioning systems, she’d seen it before.

She still was never, ever used to it. And no, not the faulty air conditioning part, although she hated that to hell and back.

No, it was the fact that she was all alone. No one to talk to. Not just even no one to talk to, in fact, it seemed like almost every person at her school seemed to hate her. Luz tried to ignore that most of the time.  _Whatever, I have homework, I have fanfiction to write. It’s not like it’s a big deal._

But it was. Luz loves talking to people. She loves being with people. Just existing around people. She’s a people person.

But to have every single potential friend at your school hate you? That must hurt.

And it did. Luz was constantly being insulted, pushed against her locker (which 95% of the time had some sort of vandalism done to it), and was day in and day out constantly undermined by her teachers and peers. That does something to a person.

Luz might seem like she might be a friendly little gumdrop on the outside. But deep inside? She cries herself to sleep at night. She’s so pissed off she can’t live up to the stupid expectations people thrust onto her small 14-year-old shoulders. That she can’t maintain every single standard society wants her to. That she isn’t ordinary.

And by now? She’s frustrated. She’s hurt. She wants to cry every time someone calls her an idiot, or says that she shouldn’t be alive.

She knows what suicide is. Hell, her mom has had several lectures with her telling her how she shouldn’t kill herself, how  Mamí loves her so much.

But she’s mad. She’s pushed over the end so many times that she wants to do it. Drag the knife across her hand or whatever. Take that damned shower with the toaster. 

Some days? She wished she wasn’t alive.

This day wasn’t so different. Luz gets off of the bus at 6, walks into her house, sprawls out on the couch, checks her phone, and gets up and strolls into the kitchen. 

Of course mom’s working late again today, she thinks as she opens the microwave door, a frozen dinner staring back at her. She takes the box in her hands and reads the instructions on the back of it. Her stomach grumbles. She sighs. “Third night in a row I’m having macaroni and cheese. You’re lucky I never get tired of this meal,  _Mamí,_ ” She smiled, putting the box back into the microwave and setting it to 7 minutes.

And so she waited. 

Luz leaned against the countertop and patted her legs rhythmically. She’d had a specific song stuck in her head for days now.  _Sick Of Losing Soulmates._ Luz never had a friend, or a soulmate, but somehow that song resonated with her. It’s like she had the feeling that she always had a friend, but they left her.

She listened to the song while she was doodling on her bed a couple of nights ago. She drifted her eyes over at her phone when the song started playing, her mouth slowly falling open and tears forming in her eyes, as she lifted her pencil off of her page. She immediately grabbed her phone and sat up. Her gaze lingered down to the name of the video. She immediately pressed the like button, trying to vanquish any thought that this song could get stuck in her head.

To no such avail, as it did.

Luz looked up and sighed. “I’m sure sick of losing my soulmate, wherever the heck they are.” She looked at the microwave. Her food was done. She hadn’t known for how long, though.

She reached over and pulled the door open, lifting the macaroni meal out fo the microwave, hot steam warming her hands. She placed the box on the countertop and opened the refrigerator door, scanning the shelves to see where the juice was.  Maybe that song was meant to find me,  Luz wondered. It’s not too out of the park. Scientists are theorizing that intertwined realities are a possibility, so who knows. Maybe your future self has a soulmate.  “Where the frick’s the juice?” Luz said, after shortly scanning a few shelves out of laziness. She blinked and then finally noticed where the juice was. “Maybe I am dumber than I thought,” She said, grabbing the quart.

She poured herself a glass, not really caring how much she filled up, then took her dinner and headed upstairs, satchel slung over her shoulder.

She opened her door and set her dinner down at her desk, flopping down on her chair. She opened her phone.  6:27, Thursday, May 28th, 2020. Thank god school would be out soon in less than a week or two. Luz couldn’t bear suffering through another month of relentless teasing.

She crossed her legs and closed her eyes, trying to think. What would she even do for the summer? It’s not like she really had anywhere to to go. She’d been stuck at home for the past few summers while people from her school posted about their amazing vacations in Hawaii, or whatever. 

Maybe she’d try to get heavier into writing. Her number one aspiration (Well, technically it’s her number two aspiration. Being a witch is definitely her number one aspiration.) was to become a famous writer like the author of the Good Witch Azura books she’d read.

_Good Witch Azura._ Luz had been hooked on that book series ever since she found the first book at a garage sale three years ago. Only now had she found an online community centered around it. 

There’s only five books in the series as of yet, and Luz read every single one of them at least twenty times over. Her favorite book out of the series was book five. In that one, Azura and her rival Hecate overcome their rivalry and end up being best friends. (Luz definitely thought of them as love interests, though, and her fanfictions reflect that. She’s in love with the enemies to lovers dynamic.)

Yet it only seemed that blank faces liked what she put out on Kayo3 and SqwattPad. The words they said were kind, but motionless. Meaningless. Drilled into thousands of binary coding that only a machine could feel the effects of. Luz appreciated every compliment, but she never felt any of the words she read. None of those people knew who she was, or what her dreams were. They didn’t know how hard life was for her. Maybe that was just Luz being unable to accept compliments. She wasn’t sure.

Luz hummed. 

_ ♪  What a strange being you are. _

_God knows where I would be if you hadn’t found me_

_ sitting all alone in the dark.  ♪ _

Again and again, those lyrics kept repeating in her head. She hadn’t really heard most of  _Sick Of Losing Soulmates_ _,_ but she heard the first words loud and clear. It’s because those words stuck with her. Soulmates are strange beings. Sometimes you’d find your fingers intertwined by a red string, or stuck in a closet together, or, how it usually would play out, by a swipe right on Sinder.

Luz never really imagined herself having an actual soulmate, but more a jumble of the things she loved and appreciated. She wanted someone who was pretty on the inside, who cared about people, who didn’t care what people thought of them. Luz also guessed she wanted someone who could withstand her infodumps. Of course, a friend could do all of that.

Luz, though, never really considered the thought of a relationship before. Sure, she’s had crushes. A few on girls, a few on guys, but she’d never dated anyone before. And she didn’t think any of the people she liked would want her back. Luz knew no one liked her. Everyone probably even hated her. So, why would anyone want to date an idiot like her? 

But she always came back to that subject. Love. Ironically, she always had a constantly changing love/hate relationship with the concept. One day, she’d be swooning over the idea of being carried across a field by a pretty jock, the next she’d be cursing out that one doofus on the internet who told her she was ‘kitchen material’. Before she really got into high school, she mostly considered a relationship like an extended friendship.  _You could have an even bester friend who would listen to what you found on the internet, would cuddle and nuzzle you in bed on a cold night, and would dance with you at parties even if you had two left feet,_ Luz’s 11-year-old self thought.

Now she gets it. Relationships are fucking complicated. They never sway this way, or that. The prince doesn’t always love the princess the way he should. There’s so much hurt, and pain, and agony in it. At least that’s what the 70% of teenage drama movies said. But Luz got the general jist of it. There’s a lot of communication involved. There’s gonna be hurt. Pain. Comfort and consoling. It’s not just slowburn-and-then-they-lived-happily-ever-after. But the setup is worth the payoff. Luz just isn’t sure she’s worth the time.

By now, her dinner was gone and eaten and so was her juice. She’d had her phone open for a while now, browsing Rumblr and occasionally switching over to Chitter. She had been thinking of posting something (to be specific, another rant about how good macaroni and cheese is) but she didn’t feel like talking about anything, even though she wanted to say so much.

Luz shut off her phone and opened her desk’s drawer, pulling out a purple spiral notebook and a pencil. She opened the book, walking over to her bed.She stared at it for a minute. The ruffled sheets, the purple blankets strewn everywhere. She smiled weakly and fell face forward onto her bed, spreading her body weight across the mattress. 

“Mattress, how I’ve missed you...” her voice was muffled by the pillow she stuffed her face in. She sighed a hot breath into the sheets. All she wanted to do right now was go to bed, but she wasn’t in any way tired. She was just.. done. Luz lifted her face off of her pillow and got up, adjusting her position on the bed. She sat upright snd grabbed her journal, flipping through the pages.

_Eye test here, Azura sketch there— Oh, there’s me! Hi, me!_ Luz mused over the pages of the journal. Different yet similar pencil sketches on every page, some colored, some not. But each one was made by her. 

She flipped to an empty page and lifted her pencil to make the first line, when an idea popped into her head.

“Dangit, you forgot your music.”

Luz groped under the mess of sheets and found her phone, turning it on snd scrolling around until she found MewTube. 

She scrolled around her playlists.

_Prom Playlist? Since how long has it been since you’ve actually danced? Fanfic Playlist? I wish actually had the energy to jot down my thoughts right now... Aha! Drawing playlist._

Luz found the right one, and tapped to play the first song.

She started doodling, starting out with a soft sketch of the image she had in mind.

.. 

Only a few minutes pass by and she’s already done with the sketch. It’s a drawing of Azura and Hecate (of course, how original) side by side, holding up a shared staff. It’s a redraw of the cover of the fifth book.  Pretty good for not using a reference,  Luz admired the drawing, putting her pencil down again to bolden the outline. 

And she’s almost done with the outline of the staff when—

_ ♪ What a strange being you are. _

_God knows where I would be if you hadn’t found me_

_ sitting all alone in the dark.  ♪ _

The familiar tune started playing. The one Luz tried so hard to forget. She stared at her phone, lifting her pencil off of her drawing. 

She blinked, and swallowed a lump in her throat.

_ ♪  A dumb screenshot of youth. _

_ It’s funny how a cold broken teen can desperately lean on a superglued human of proof.  ♪ _

By now, the tune of the song had become ingrained in Luz’s mind. She couldn’t remember most of the lyrics, but she knew the tune. The soft strumming of the guitar. The background vocals. The hum of the singer. 

Even thought she tried so hard to forget it, she still remembered it. For some reason, Luz started panicking. She rubbed her forehead, feeling her perspiring hand rub droplets of sweat against it. Since when was I sweating? Luz felt a hot blush creep up her face. Her pencil fell from her grasp, and she reached over to grab her phone.

_ ♪ Where the hell would I be without you?  ♪ _

She grabbed her phone in her hand and instantly felt her vision blur a bit. Her head started hurting, but maybe that’s because she hadn’t had a minute to turn her phone’s brightness off, or maybe it’s because she was too hot or—

She shut her eyes and got up off of her bed, sprinting to the bathroom. Her mind was going in so many different directions, if she could just sort it all out, if she could just calm down her nerves, she’d be able to finally shut that fucking song off.

She gripped the sink’s rim and gasped for air. She must’ve dropped her phone on the floor somewhere, but she could still hear the song playing. 

_ ♪ Brave face talk so lightly, hide the truth.  ♪ _

She grasped the sink’s knob and turned the faucet on, splashing cold water in her face. She shut her eyes even further, trying to block back tears. 

_ ♪ ‘Cause I’m sick of losing soulmates.  _

_So where do we begin?_

_ I can finally see, you’re as fucked up as me, so how do we win?  ♪ _

She slowed her breathing, and turned off the water, gliding her hands over the rim of the sink.

She let go, and let every single tear forming in her eyes run down her face like a salty river. She let out her pain in sobs, hunching over the sink, head in her hands.

“I’M SO FUCKING SORRY I CAN’T BE WHAT THE WORLD WANTS ME TO BE!” 

Luz sobbed, cupping her hands around her face.

The music continued to play.

_ ♪ ‘Cause I’m sick of losing soulmates. _

_Don’t wanna be alone again._

_ I can finally see, you’re as fucked up as me, so how do we win?  ♪ _

Luz opened her eyes and looked at her phone, just sitting there, on the floor. 

She bent down, and picked up her phone, pausing the song.

Tears were still streaming down her face, but not as rapidly as they were before.

Luz shut her eyes again, and breathed in.

...

Luz opened her eyes again and breathed out, feeling the hot water burn her skin. 

After what happened earlier, all she wanted to do was take a hot shower and go to bed. She felt so empty and burned out from letting loose earlier that she had nothing left in her.

By now, she’d nearly erased  _Sick Of Losing Soulmates_ from her head. The song, in its entirety, was somewhat easy to forget. Bits and fragments still bounced around in her mind, but they barely formed a tune. 

Luz’s eyes glazed over, and looked upward. Her mouth tasted salty and her nose still ran, but she still continued to try and breathe in normally. By now, she’d been stuck in a boxed-in position, her head between her knees and her arms curled around her legs. The shower curtain wasn’t completely closed, and her shoulders felt the bite of the bathroom’s cold air conditioning.

Luz shivered, reaching out her hand to grasp the razor blade sitting on the shower’s shelf. Her hand smoothed over the blade, and she firmly took it in her hand. 

She stared at it.

_Just. This. Once._

She edged the blade to her arm, feeling the sharpness of the blade ever-so-slightly cut her skin. A tiny drop of blood leaked out. 

Her eyes widened. She immediately slammed the razor blade back onto the shelf, and rubbing her hand against the cut. 

_Why the heck’d you do that?_ She wondered, stroking the cut.

She bit her lip and crossed her arms.

_Better get a band-aid, idiot._

...

She walked into her bedroom, turned off the lights, and yawned. It’d been only an hour since ‘The Incident’ disrupted her sketching. She’d gotten out of the shower, slapped a band-aid on the cut (yet another addition to the boo-boo-buddies club,) and changed into her night clothes. Luz wasn’t gonna lie, she was tired and ready to pass out as soon as her head hit the pillow. 

Luz strolled over to her bed, where her drawing supplies laid strewn everywhere across the sheets. The Azura/Hecate sketch was left unfinished, but maybe she’d trace the last parts tomorrow. Her higher brain functions were shutting off already.

She cleared all of the drawing supples and shoved them onto the floor, too tired to even care what went where. She climbed into her bed, pulled the covers over herself and blinked. 

She breathed in, and slowly pulled the covers from her head, staring at her desk.

By now, her mom should be pulling into the driveway, and getting dinner. Luz looked at the photo of her and her mom on her desk.

She smiled.

“Love you too,  _Mamì_. ”

Luz closed her eyes, and nuzzled into the warm comforter, a night spent wishing now done.

**Author's Note:**

> i’m not sure how exactly i feel about this fic, but i kind of.. i don’t know.  
> i don’t really like it, but hey, maybe you might. 
> 
> and as always, if you enjoyed this fic leave a kudos.  
> and if you want updates on more fics (aswell as other things) go follow my tumblr! https://elliestarss.tumblr.com/


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